More than 200,000 Gurkhas served in the British Army during World War I. Collectively, the 10 Gurkha regiments, each consisting of two battalions, suffered approximately 20,000 casualties and received almost 2,000 awards for gallantry. They each (along with the short-lived 11th Gurkhas – which has been revived in the modern Indian army) fought in all the main 'theatres' of war: From the fields of Flanders in France to the hills of Gallipoli in Turkey and the deserts of Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Palestine.

A New Kind of War

The Gurkhas who arrived in France in 1914 were thrown into a kind of industrial warfare based on the destructive power of earth-shattering artillery, equipment and aircraft, that they had never seen or experienced before. General Sir James Willcocks described the arrival of the 2nd battalion of the 2nd Gurkha Rifles (GR) at the Western front at the end of October 1914:

Here were these gallant fellows just arrived and exposed to every form of terror, and they could reply only with their valour and the rifles and the two machine-guns per battalion with which they were armed [no trench mortars or hand grenades], and yet they did it.

General Sir James Willcocks, 1914

The men of the 2/2nd Gurkha Rifles and all Indian Army troops were new to trench warfare and the conditions they faced were terrible; muddy trenches so deep that the soldiers could not see over the top of them and so full of water that 'trench foot' - infected feet - was a problem for everyone. Worse still, the Gurkhas and the rest of the Indian Army had to face their first freezing European Winter in the trenches, wearing uniforms and boots designed for tropical climates, with frost-bite - especially of the feet - commonplace in the trenches.

In September 1915 the 2nd battalion of the 8th Gurkhas fought until the last man, alongside 2/3 GR at the Battle of Loos. General Willcocks wrote of them:

...Although no longer the corps that suffered so terribly in those early days, it was determined to leave its mark deep cut in the soils of Flanders... and we may well pronounce that the 8th Gurkhas indeed did their duty and found their Valhalla.

General Sir James Willcocks, 1915

Once they had adjusted to the alien climates, conditions and warfare, the Gurkhas acquitted themselves with honour and enhanced their already high reputation as fearless warriors. In 1915 the men of the 1st battalion of the 6th Gurkhas were the only troops to reach the strategic high point in Gallipoli that later came to be known as 'Gurkha Bluff'.

'Bravest of the Brave'

The famous quote from Sir Ralph Turner, a former officer in the 3rd Queen Alexandra's Own Gurkha Rifles, was written in memory of his experiences serving with Gurkhas during the First World War.

As I write these last words, my thoughts return to you who were my comrades…Uncomplaining you endure hunger and thirst and wounds; and at the last your unwavering lines disappear into the smoke and wrath of battle. Bravest of the brave, most generous of the generous, never had country more faithful friends than you.

Professor Sir Ralph Turner, MC, 1914

Friends in Far Flung Places

Gurkhas’ bravery is well-known. Perhaps less widely-appreciated is their adaptability and their ability to make friends in unlikely places, such as in Afghanistan today. A historian of the 9th Gurkhas noted that:

Not even the most experienced and knowledgeable pre-war officer... could have conceived what was now a common occurrence... 'Johnny Gurk', clad in serge tunic and balaclava cap, sitting in a French peasant's kitchen with his feet on the stove, smoking a pipe and drinking beer or coffee, and discussing life and the war situation in... broken French!

9th Gurkha Rifles Regimental Historian

After the War

For a small nation like Nepal, the loss of tens of thousands of men was a staggering death toll. Like so many troops, the remains of the majority of Gurkhas never made the long journey home. After the First World War, Gurkhas returned to India from where they were sent to fight in the 3rd Afghan War in 1919 and in the bitter battles between the British and the Pathan (or Pashtun) people on India's North West Frontier.

Comments(1)

The Gurkha Holocaust |
'Gautam Gurung'25th July 2012 00:26 AM

The ethnic clashes between the Khasis, Garos, and Jaintias – natives of Meghalaya – and the people of Nepali origin have, thus far, claimed two dozen lives. Seventeen Nepali speakers have lost their lives in the brutal clashes. Now the fear is that more such communal riots would take place, if not in the coming days, then in the coming years.

The communal riots have spread from Lingpih to other districts of Meghalaya: Jaintia Hills, Garo Hills, and the capital of Meghalaya – Shillong. And the people of Nepali origin have become the target. This communal riot won’t subside any time soon if state actors are behind it, as it happened in 1987. Still, the majority of the victims of the 1987 riots have not yet overcome their trauma. In the riots, hundreds of people of Nepali origin disappeared. And the state government, unfortunately, has refused to admit that they perished in the riots.

Most of the missing persons belonged to a floating population, who moved from one village to another in search of greener pastures for their cattle. And they possessed no documents as such to prove their identity or nationality because they were illiterate, were always on the move, and lived at the mercy of local village headmen.

Unlike the 1987 riots, the recent killing of innocent people of Nepali origin captured media attention only because of the “border” dispute between the two Northeast Indian states — Assam and Meghalaya. There have been many such brutal incidents of communal violence in the past, which went unreported. And mostly, innocent children, women and elderly people were the victims.

Lingpih is one of the 12 border areas over which “claims and counterclaims” have been made by both the states of Assam and Meghalaya. Meghalaya claims that Lingpih falls within its jurisdiction in the West Khasi Hills district while Assam has claimed that the area falls under the jurisdiction of Kamrup district.

For generations, the people of Nepali origin in Lingpih have, however, been the dominant community. Last July, the Synjuk Ki Rangbah Shnong of Langpih Area (SKRSLA) had issued “quit notice” to the people of Nepali origin residing in Lingpih and adjoining villages.

SKRSLA said in the notice (The Shillong Times, July 21, 2009): “It has decided to give 15 days time with the quit notice to the Nepali population since they would need sufficient time to pack up and leave Lingpih permanently.”

In the same notice, SKRSLA president T Nonglang warned that “if they failed to comply with the demand after the 15 days time, then they would not hesitate to use force in order to remove them from the area.”

Such an imminent and militant threat from the local Khasi group prompted the Assam state government to deploy police force to the area to prevent any kind of untoward incidents.

In addition, this threat explicitly illustrated that the people of Nepali origin had been the target of the local tribal militant groups. Both Assam and Meghalaya state governments were well aware of potential communal violence. And there have been ample evidence that the Meghalaya state government in the past used its state paramilitary force to displace and evict people of Nepali origin, forcefully, out of the state.

The Nepali settlement in Meghalaya dates back to 1824, when British India deployed Gurkhas to clear the malaria-infested Northeast India. Initially, British India wanted to set up its base in Cherapunji but, as a result of heavy rains throughout the year in the area, it chose Shillong, which later became the capital of Northeast India. The Gorkha Pathshala High School established in 1878 has been a monument of the people of Nepali origin when they actually began to settle in Meghalaya. Besides, the 1960 census also explicitly shows that the people of Nepali origin were in majority in Shillong. But they were rendered stateless because of India’s Land Ceiling Act, which came into force to protect the local ethnic communities and safeguard the rights of India’s tribal communities across the rainbow region.

Unfortunately, the Modilization (Narendra Modi was the architect of the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat) of Northeast India, particularly in Meghalaya, has always been a state affair. And the Khasi Students Union has been the tool of the state political actors who have used it to unleash a terror campaign against the minority Nepali population living for centuries there.

In 1987, the president of the Khasi Students Union, Bull Lyndoh, spearheaded an anti-Nepali terror campaign. Two years later, Lyndoh got the state government’s ministry of agriculture portfolio as his reward.

At the outset, the 1987 communal riots broke out in the coalmine areas of Jowai in the Jaintia Hills. Politicians and student leaders, backed by the state police force, attacked Nepali settlements there. In Shillong, the Gorkha High School was burnt down, and Nepali settlements in other areas in the capital attacked. Over 35,000 people of Nepali origin were driven out of the state in less than a week. The state government even terminated the tenures of dozens of government employees of Nepali origin simply on the ground of being Nepali speakers.

It is also true that for the past several decades, the “foreign origin” tag for political gains has been the leading factor in state-organized communal violence in Meghalaya. Vulnerable Nepali villages scattered across the state, have been the targets of Khasis, Garos, and Jaintias of Meghalaya. Neither the state government bothered to probe the killings or massacres of innocent people of Nepali origin in the past, nor has the federal government done enough to protect the people of Nepali origin in Northeast India.

Rather, some Indian states have designed laws to curb the rights of Nepali speakers living for centuries there. Such laws as Land Ceiling Act, Schedule Tribe Reservations, Inner Line Permits for non-natives, have shaken the Nepali settlements in Northeast India. Such laws have also stoked anti-Nepali sentiments because of the typical Nepali traits of sheer hard work and skills in agriculture, rearing livestock, and other professional vocations. Now the future of these very Nepali speakers has become more acutely uncertain, especially in Meghalaya. There is no organization which can raise voice for the rights to life. It is high time, therefore, Nepal sat down with New Delhi to save the lives of these vulnerable Nepali speakers living in Meghalaya since the early 19th century. After all, they from a part of the Nepali diaspora.